“nuclear Energy In 2023: Safety, Waste Management, And Advancements” – A Wapiti man whose career at the Department of Energy has focused on nuclear safety says the planned TerraPower Natrium reactor at Kemmerer poses serious risks for proliferation and accidents. TerraPower says these risks have been reviewed and addressed to the extent possible.
When TerraPower and PacifiCorp announced in November 2021 that they had selected Kemmerer as the location for their Sodium Reactor Demonstration Project, many hailed the opportunity as a path to a diverse energy economy for Wyoming.
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In the next few months, TerraPower plans to break ground on a sodium test project for a larger demonstration project. If the reactor design is proven, it would provide plenty of carbon-free energy and provide a viable replacement for the state’s coal plants, TerraPower said.
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Bill Tallen, a resident of Wapiti, spent a 20-year career at the Department of Energy focused on the threat posed by terrorists who sought ways to create improvised nuclear devices.
Tallen argues that the sodium reactor planned for Kemmerer has a high potential for explosive accidents and the proliferation of nuclear weapons material. Henry Sokolosky, executive director of the Washington-based Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), has similar concerns.
Jeff Navin, director of external affairs for TerraPower, says these concerns were considered and addressed as much as possible during the design and development of the project.
Tallen said he is not ideologically opposed to nuclear power. He said he was rubbing elbows with that crowd years ago, but not where he is today.
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“Disbelief in nuclear energy is one of the main ideological tenets of leftist, anti-establishment politics,” Tallen said. “I had to tell them that I disagree with many of your basic assumptions. I’m just saying that this particular [Sodium] technology going as it is now – I don’t think it’s a good idea.
The Sodium Reactor under construction at Kemmerer uses sodium instead of water as a heat sink for the reactor core. That heat is then transferred to water, creating steam to turn turbines.
“There has never been a sodium reactor that has fulfilled its promise. All of them have had leaks and fires and explosions and toxic releases,” Tallen said. “It’s true that we haven’t had major problems in America, but the past is not always prologue. The risk is still there.”
Naveen acknowledged that previous sodium reactors had problems with leaks and accidents, but that design improvements have allowed reactors of this type to operate safely around the world, including in Russia and the United States.
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The Idaho National Laboratory operated a sodium-cooled fast reactor for 30 years before decommissioning it in 1994. Naveen said the Sodium design benefited greatly from the Idaho research.
“One of the reasons we chose a sodium-cooled reactor is because we have decades of data,” Navin said.
Natrium’s design, Navin explained, incorporates various safety features that have emerged from previous crash studies. For example, tubes carrying sodium run inside a larger tube with an inert gas that won’t react with the sodium if the inner sodium tube leaks. They also have a lot of advanced sensor equipment that can quickly detect any leaks.
“We’re not thinking that we’ll never have a leak, but if we do have one, we’re working to catch it early. And we can reduce its impact,” Naveen said.
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Most nuclear reactors build the steam plant on top of the reactor. When it comes to a liquid-cooled reactor, it can lead to disaster because the flowing water can fall down and come in contact with the sodium.
Because the sodium design steam turbine is hundreds of yards away from the reactor, water and sodium are kept separate.
Sodium is a common mineral, Navin said, along with TerraPower’s prevention of sodium accidents. It can be ordered from Amazon and is regularly used in classroom science teaching.
“My son’s high school chemistry class was doing experiments in early spring. They were looking at potassium, sodium and metals, and how they interact with air and water,” Naveen said.
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“The plutonium produced in these machines is not just a usable weapon. Not even a weapon rank. It’s a super weapon level,” Sokolski said.
Sodium reactors run on highly enriched low-enriched uranium, known as HALEU. Currently, it is produced only in Russia, and there is little material related to the invasion of Ukraine. This caused the Kemmerer project to be delayed.
According to Tallen, as these reactors grow and more HALEU is produced, he is simply calling on nations like Iran to find sources of material that can be enriched to weapons-grade levels with the necessary equipment.
“These are parties that actually have or can build enrichment capabilities and are not concerned about U.S. export restrictions,” Tallen said.
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According to Navin, the risk of sprawl is a concern and something TerraPower wants to mitigate. As such, the Natrium design uses a “once-through fuel cycle”, meaning it is not recycled. Recycled material creates opportunities for deployment of weapons-grade materials.
There is a transient state in which plutonium is produced during the reaction, Navin said, which is true of all nuclear reactions.
“To get that, you have to cut through the core of an active fission nuclear reaction, and the dose of radiation you get? Before you get to the plutonium, you have to break it down,” Navin said.
In the spring of 2021, Tallen exchanged emails with Naveen through Gov. Mark Gordon’s office. The answers are the same, but Tallen says they don’t address all of his concerns. He says the risks are too many and safer types of reactors are often overlooked. He said from all his research, commercial-scale thorium reactors would be a better option.
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“That’s what scares the hell out of me. Well, let’s look to the future. Let’s look at nuclear alternatives. But let’s look at the ones that are safe, cost-effective and reasonable,” Tallen said.
Although TerraPower was forced to push back the start date of its demonstration project due to supply chain issues with HALEU, the project is moving forward. They have a long way to go before they get all the permits and complete the construction of the project. When it’s running, it produces up to 500 megawatts of electricity, slightly more than the coal-fired power station in Kemmerer.
This spring, TerraPower plans to break ground on a sodium testing and filling facility. According to Navin, this will allow their engineers to fully understand how sodium interacts with the reactor while it is operating.
“It gives our engineers a chance to work with sodium a little bit and test some materials to make sure all our assumptions are correct,” Navin said.
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After Dumping Oil Stocks, Biden Walks a Tightrope to Avoid Voter Outcry August 08, 2023 Environmental groups ignore Wyoming’s 3,500-well Jonah Field Cat Urbigkit project. , back in March, much to the dismay of many. “By the grace of God, the world averted a nuclear holocaust last night,” the United States ambassador to the United Nations said the next morning. Five days later, when power went out to Chernobyl, Ukraine’s foreign minister tweeted that its standby diesel generators had 48 hours of power and that a radiation leak was “imminent.” And a few months later, in a video address in August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi discussed the occupation of Zaporozhye and claimed that “every minute that Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster.”
Commentators, either through ignorance or willful neglect, have misunderstood the layers of redundant safety systems built into nuclear plants like Zaporizhia. If the power went out, the generators would be turned on; if the primary chiller were to fail, the secondary system would kick in. A “disaster” or “accident” requires a prolonged period of human error and system failure. Such a chain of events could hypothetically happen, as happened at Three Mile Island, but it could not be just from the shooting and the loss of power. A reactor would not explode like a bomb and cannot go off.
Meanwhile, the highly radioactive mass inside Chernobyl is largely invulnerable, surrounded by a huge cement and metal sarcophagus and an even larger, $1.6 billion aircraft hangar-like structure designed to withstand earthquakes and tornadoes. A recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Chernobyl’s 25-year-old uranium fuel was covered with enough water to make it unsafe even without electricity.
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But so many people didn’t – and still don’t – understand all the safety precautions.
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